Change of State
by chezchuckles
Summary: The AU of 7x06 "Time of Our Lives" AU in which Castle makes it to Captain Beckett with those two coffees. 'Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.' -William Shakespeare
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **This will be a multi-chapter story in which Castle - trapped in the alternate universe of 7x06 'The Time of Our Lives' - avoids the man with the gun and doesn't get abducted. Instead he makes it to Captain Beckett with those two coffees, a change of state wherein he hopes to effect another change of state.

Also, since this is a concept that Sandiane Carter and I explored in 'A Better Fate', I feel a debt towards her for some of that groundwork we did together in exploring their relationship via an Alternate Beckett. Thanks, Julie.

**x**

_for those of you who come with me on these journeys into the alternate - and always have_

* * *

><p><strong>Change of State<strong>

* * *

><p><em>Sonnet 29, William Shakespeare<em>

_When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,_  
><em>I all alone beweep my outcast state<em>  
><em>And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries<em>  
><em>And look upon myself and curse my fate,<em>  
><em>Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,<em>  
><em>Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,<em>  
><em>Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,<em>  
><em>With what I most enjoy contented least;<em>  
><em>Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,<em>  
><em>Haply I think on thee, and then my state,<em>  
><em>Like to the lark at break of day arising<em>  
><em>From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;<em>  
><em>For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings<em>  
><em>That then I scorn to change my state with kings.<em>

* * *

><p>Mm, he could smell the coffee.<p>

Okay. Taxi?

No. He had too much energy for that.

In fact, Richard Castle was whistling as he weaved through New York City's heavy rush hour foot traffic. He had eyes only for the path before him, neatly sidestepping a burly man who was blocking his way, darting around a couple having a messy fight, eating up the sidewalk with his long stride.

He went yards in seconds, racing towards his goal, his vision firmly fixed before him in his mind's eye.

He knew exactly what had to be done to get him home, get him back to Kate.

Prove to _this_ version of his lovely almost-bride that it was all worth it, that there could be a different life for them.

Of course, the Kate Beckett in any world was worth it, any of it, even this strange universe-shifting he had done.

He was nearly breathless as he homed in on the 12th Precinct.

He had such a renewed purpose now: he was a chivalrous knight on a noble quest to win his lady's love.

If he was honest, if he stopped long enough to think about it, he hadn't been chivalrous in a good long while, let alone on a noble quest. He'd done enough tilting at windmills, but there'd been no substance behind it. He had left her for two months.

Two months. And for reasons he didn't even know, but he had to live with the consequences every day.

He had to see it in her eyes when she was caught off-guard. Two weeks ago, he'd walked into the closet to look for his tie and found her with her nose in his shirts and tears streaking down her face.

Didn't make him feel good. How could he ask that woman to do it all over again? Trust that he'd show up this time, that he'd make it to the altar.

They were both skittish.

But he had two coffees in his hands, _her_ coffee, just as she liked it, and he had a mission to invigorate him once more. That coal factory in his own timeline had given him a good knock to the head, setting straight his priorities, reminding him of how good it really was.

She'd made him coffee that morning, hadn't she? Extra strong to battle his insomnia-induced, jaw-cracking yawns. She'd been cutting a melon for breakfast, ready to share; she'd wrapped her arm around his neck and pressed her hips to his and smiled, head tilting like it did when she was seeing him again as if for the first time.

He'd used to pay attention to those things.

It had been a while.

He missed Kate.

For a second, his step faltered. The pedestrians diverted around him, flowing on either side, and he was caught, struck by the missing.

Would the universe leave him here alone for two months, missing her like she'd missed him? Not certain he'd ever find her again, hoping but losing hope when things got dark, two months of-

A pedestrian bumped into him from behind, knocked him loose.

But no.

No, he was changing their fate _today_.

And it all started with Kate Beckett, whom he had faith in, absolute faith.

He'd get back to her _through_ her.

* * *

><p>Castle picked up his pace, ready now, ready. He was going to do this; he could do this. He wasn't leaving her for another two months - or however this worked. Wasn't there some rule of the universe that matter could be neither created nor destroyed? So his alter ego had to have disappeared from this timeline just as he'd entered it.<p>

Maybe his Kate was dealing with this universe's version of himself. Perish the thought. The same world class jerk who had a girl his daughter's age sneaking into the loft for a round of no-strings sex, the same guy who had alienated said daughter and pushed her to live with her _mother_ in LA - that guy?

No, he really hoped Kate wasn't getting that version of him. They were doomed if-

He froze on the sidewalk, smile splitting his face.

Felt like serendipity because _there she was._

A guy walking too close knocked into him, but Castle stepped off the curb and into the street, ducked his head to peer into the car parked there. A car he knew very well, intimately acquainted with, as one might say.

He grinned, rapped his knuckles on the glass. "Hello, Captain."

The engine was running; she had her hand on the gear shift, ready to go, but her head had turned to him at the intrusion. Castle took a chance and pried up the handle on the passenger door, letting out a war-whoop when it opened for him.

Fate.

Her shoulders slumped a little, but he ignored it. (He was good at ignoring her tell-tale _no, Castle_; he'd been doing it for years).

He got into her police cruiser, the very same car that had gone into the drink with them in it, and he sank back into that awful, wonderfully-poking spring in the bucket seat. He slammed the door shut after him and turned to Captain Kate Beckett.

She wasn't glaring at him. This was quite a more approachable Kate Beckett than he'd even hoped.

This Beckett was a little more... worn down.

"Well?" he said. "Shall we be off?"

Her eyes flicked past him to something outside the window, but her attention came right back. She sighed and finished putting the car in gear.

"You're incorrigible, aren't you, Mr Castle?"

He grinned and handed over her coffee.

She actually took it.

* * *

><p>He left it to silence long enough for her to appreciate her first few swallows, knowing how Kate needed the chance to savor the hit of caffeine and clear her head of sleep. It was so much easier, this time around, knowing her like he did.<p>

"So what're we doing?" he asked. When she had pulled into traffic, he'd fumbled with his seatbelt before he'd managed it, his eagerness almost a taste in his mouth. Now the seatbelt cut into him as she braked suddenly, grinding to a halt in rush hour traffic.

"We're revisiting this case," she grit out.

He lifted an exaggerated eyebrow and stared at her.

She pressed her lips flat, that grimace that would later, over time, turn to not-smiling-at-you-Castle. Grimace was a place to start. He could work with that.

"Revisiting this case, are we?" he rejoiced.

"_I_ am." Her words were clipped, brows knitted together. But she gave him an uncertain look - a darting of her eyes - before focusing back to the traffic before them. Her finger tapped against the steering wheel. "There - might be more that can be done. A second shooter out there."

She was defensive, not happy with herself, but driven to see this through. She had so much more _caution_ than his Kate; his Kate who would have jumped right in, who had arrested a _New York Times_ best-selling author just because he'd shown her up.

She was older and wiser, and she wasn't quite the same woman.

So he was silent a moment, letting the atmosphere in the car unwind, letting her ruffled feathers settle again. And then he said quietly, "What made you change your mind, Captain?"

She huffed. "What you said. About compromising. It's weighed on me all night. That's not me. That's _not_ who I am, Mr Castle."

He felt it filling his chest again - hope.

Castle reached out - couldn't help himself - and lightly placed his hand over her forearm, rubbed his thumb at her wrist. One of his favorite places, the harsh scallop of bone meeting the flex of tendons.

She flinched, and he released her, but the hope still clung to him.

He smiled to himself, spoke into the silence of the car, spoke to the woman he was trying to get back to. "I know you're not."


	2. Chapter 2

**Change of State**

* * *

><p>"So which parts are we revisiting?" he asked finally.<p>

"All of it," she said quietly. She wouldn't look at him much. He wondered if now was the time to explain Derrick Storm. Perhaps he could use it as a segue into her mother's murder.

No, too awkward. Darn. He'd really missed his chance last night. At the bar, on their working date, he could have gotten so much of this out of the way - she'd given him the perfect opportunity, tugging the ring out from between her breasts.

He had really enjoyed that suit.

"All of it," he echoed. "Where are we starting then?"

She growled something at the car in front of them - or perhaps at him - and turned on her blinker, making a rather snap decision and pulling a U-turn. He blinked and gripped the door handle, surprised by her.

In any universe, Kate Beckett could surprise him still.

"Let's start at the crime scene," she got out. "Since this is clearly not working out."

"The homicide," he elaborated. "Where they shot the courier."

"Yes. The beginning, not the end."

He'd gotten the impression they'd been heading for the coal factory, which is where he would have gone first. Where he had expected her to go as well, but the Captain was proving unpredictable when cornered.

And it was clear now that she felt cornered. He was in her car, wasn't he? And he'd proved to be as hard to shake as a bad penny, always turning up.

Hmm. What had Kate said, standing on that bomb? _You really do think it was love at first sight, don't you_?

And later that night, their love tinged with a sense of both fatalism and giddy relief, she'd said, _You're cute, you know. Don't ever change._

He was going to have to seriously consider the idea that it had not, actually, been love at first sight. And it wasn't in this universe either.

She was speeding. Beckett never sped in the police precinct's car when she didn't have due cause. This Beckett was speeding.

_Compromised._

"You were mentioning, last night," he brought up quickly, "how you couldn't solve 'this one case'?" He flicked his eyes towards her breasts - meaning only the ring - and sure enough, it was there, nestled in the dark shadows that he didn't need to fantasize about, he knew from memory.

She cleared her throat. His eyes snapped up to her cold gaze and she turned her head back to the traffic. He blushed.

His own fiancee - partner - friend - his _Kate_ and she'd made him blush over what he already had seen, saw, knew so very well.

"You were fiddling with that ring," he said, trying to cover. "Was it - someone you knew - someone close to you...?"

Absolute silence.

_Neat trick, Rick, but don't think you know me._

Oh, _hell._ This was going to be a lot harder than he'd thought.

"The boys might have told you," he tried again. "Or you overheard. I have something of a gift."

She snorted. "I'd heard something like that."

"Nothing gets past you, does it?" he smiled.

She cut her eyes to him as if she expected him to be sarcastic. It wasn't. He wasn't.

"I meant only that you're a good cop, Kate."

Her walls were up; he could see them in her eyes, in the rigid set of her jaw. This Captain was less angry than his Beckett, but not less wounded.

"Regardless," he said smoothly, "I have a gift. I can - see things. I know things about people. Like I know about you."

Her shoulders hunched, nearly imperceptibly. If he didn't know her, he wouldn't have seen it.

No, she wasn't less wounded. That killed him; it really did. It'd been a long time since he'd seen Kate as anything less than completely and utterly, devastatingly, confident. At the beginning of their relationship, some of those insecurities had come through, shining in her eyes, caught by her teeth at her bottom lip, but that had been more about _him_ and his rather terrible track record, and he'd deserved it. So he'd done what he could to ease her mind, to guide them through that rocky first few months, and the confidence had blossomed.

But this? Kate Beckett was always confident in her professional life. Always. But for a few flickers of PTSD after the shooting-

_Oh._

This Kate had never been shot. This Kate had never seen her Captain die for her, laying his life down to keep her safe. And even more - this Kate hadn't shot Dick Coonan just to rescue Castle in her own precinct, hadn't worked desperately to save her mother's murderer's life.

The worst thing he'd ever done to Kate was opening her mother's case and playing in it like it was a cool new toy. They had almost not come back from that. But more importantly, _Kate_ had almost not come back from that.

She'd told him, she had _warned_ him that she drowned in that case. And now here he was with a fresh start, a blank slate of Kate Beckett, and he was going to do it to her all over again?

Okay, different tack.

Castle cast a sidelong look at her. Fresh, blank slate she was most definitely not. This was a Kate with mileage on her, struggles unknown, demons wrestled. This Captain had worked hard to get where she was, had played politics and raised her precinct's case closure rate and looked at the numbers. This Kate was a different woman, with her own problems, her own impossible, beautiful complexities.

He sighed, couldn't help wanting to connect with her, because Kate Beckett in any universe drew him like a moth. "'And out of spent and aged things I formed the world anew.'"

Her eyes shot to his, bewildered and a little hurt. "Emerson?"

"Wow," he whispered. "I keep forgetting you read."

* * *

><p>"My gift works like this," he explained. "I <em>see<em> something, images if you will, as a kind of burst of static in my brain. It's rather noisy."

"I'm sure it is."

He slinked a look at her and she was deadpan. But he was pretty sure she was making fun of him.

Kinda made him excited. Normal Beckett behavior, poking fun at him, at his expense. He was built to take it like affection, conditioned by years with his mother and his exes to feel special when they snarked. Snark made him feel at home.

"What that means is," he went on, "sometimes my impressions aren't entirely dead on. Sometimes they get tweaked in translation, if you will."

"Right. So of course, that gives you room to be wildly inaccurate and _still_ claim to have a gift. I know your kind. Profiting from people's misfortunes."

"I don't do it for money," he protested. "It's a limited ability. Only works with people I lo-love."

Whoops. That had come out of his mouth before he'd thought it through.

She didn't look at him.

"I meant, the transmission is clearer with a stronger emotion." Yeah, even _he_ didn't believe him. "Forget trying to explain it. I know things, Beckett. Call it psychic abilities, call it looking into the future, call it whatever you want. But I know things I shouldn't know. Things about you."

"You talk a lot, don't you? You really like the sound of your own voice that much?"

"Yes," he hummed. Wow, it just buzzed straight through him, didn't it? Felt like love. Felt like Beckett, more precisely, and Beckett loved him.

She sighed. Traffic had finally begun to thin. They'd started at the airport where the courier had been picked up and had taken the same route to the crime scene that the car had gone. Getting nowhere - but not very fast.

"You're a fascinating woman, Kate Beckett."

She frowned.

"Call my knowing an incredible gift for observation," he said. "Take, for instance, your upper Manhattan reserve, good breeding, definitely not Bridge and Tunnel. The impeccable suits, today's and yesterday's - name brand, expensive, _designer_ brands that aren't possible on even a Captain's salary. The watch, which is a man's, so most likely a gift-"

"You can stop," she said, flint in her voice.

Castle closed his mouth, blinked. He'd done it again. Fallen right into his usual habits, picking her apart to prove himself to her. To impress her so he could preen like a peacock. Did he never learn?

Well, this time, he was going to stop right there before he was the one who did the wounding.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I'll stick to safer subjects."

"Or you could say nothing," she said easily. "Sit there in silence as repayment for my letting you ride along."

"But where's the fun in that?" he grinned.

She let out a little breath, a sound he knew well: amused despite herself.

He thought, maybe, she was cracking.

* * *

><p>They stalked the cracked pavement on foot side by side, but Beckett kept trying to pull ahead of him. The street hadn't been closed down - not for a mere crime scene - but Beckett didn't seem to mind the hurtle of cars just past her shoulder.<p>

"I don't believe in psychic abilities," she told him curtly.

"How else would I know that stuff?"

She ignored him.

"And you're worried about it stretching," he blurted out. "Worried that when you get pregnant, the tattoo will be deformed and never go back the way it should." _But I told you, right there, so close, so provocatively close, you wouldn't have to worry. _

The Captain gave him a discerning look, faintly triumphant. "See? Entirely guesswork. You think every woman secretly longs to have children. I do not." _Case closed._

Oh, right. Like he believed that. She clearly-

Oh, well, um. She didn't look at all perturbed by the knowledge. She had been visibly disconcerted with his knowing about her tattoo and motorcycle, about her wild child phase and her geek Nebula 9 cosplay, but now she looked settled again, firmly certain he couldn't possibly know her.

Kate didn't want kids? But she had _told_ him, they'd had a whole conversation in a trash dumpster about-

Huh. Maybe Kate wanted kids with him, now, and... never had thought it possible before him.

That was sobering.

Made his heart hurt. Kate was - alone back there, that other universe. All their plans for the future disappearing in front of her eyes. Whatever had happened to him there, he was now _here,_ and not there, and what if she had to deal with the Rick-Asshole of this world over _there_?

What if she had to deal with just - his disappearance? Again. He'd ditched her again.

Kate was alone. This Kate was alone too. Standing apart from him, head bowed to scrutinize the pavement, the crime scene photos in her hands as she retraced her steps.

"I miss you," he husked, quiet, the words lost in the rush of traffic.

She didn't lift her head. He hadn't been expecting her to.

"I miss you, Kate."

But it didn't send him home.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **Please help the #ThankYouTerri team raise money for Young Storytellers - a foundation dedicated to giving kids a voice through writing and performance. This is Terri Miller's favorite charity and our team has a dedicated page for Castle fans to donate - starting today, November 19, and running through December 8, 2014. Our goal is to show Terri Miller our appreciation for the writing she's done on Castle since 2009, and to say thank you for "Time Of Our Lives" - Caskett At Last!

Check it out at the **ThankYouTerri** tumblr or

www . YoungStoryTellers . com(slash) thankyouterri (slash)

* * *

><p><strong>Change of State<strong>

* * *

><p>Back in the car, Castle drummed his fingers on the center console with impatience.<p>

"Mr. Castle," she said.

She didn't snap. The even-keeled energy level this Captain maintained was seriously impressive. Or well, if Castle wasn't so annoyed, he'd be impressed. Beckett in those early days would have shot him a glare and made some comment about it, but the Captain merely said his name - calm, contained. To the point. It brooked no arguments.

The crackle of tension that usually rode in the car with them like a third passenger just wasn't here. No crackle. No spark.

No Kate to her.

This wasn't his Kate Beckett, and it had never been more obvious.

He did, however, stop drumming his fingers. She was still scary. Didn't quiet his nervous anticipation, his sinking suspicion that this wasn't going to be easy, but he quit drumming.

He couldn't _reach_ her.

He'd always gotten a rise out of Beckett, a growl that later morphed into a roll of her eyes that became a closed-lipped smile that then flourished in a gorgeous, sweet grin.

Those growls came back in bed. He'd been thrilled to hear-

"Mr. Castle." A warning. No exasperation whatsoever, just that steady warning.

He'd been running his fingers over his knee, around and around, but he stopped that too. The sensation died, and the sense of her - his Kate - died as well.

He didn't know how to get to her, this Captain Beckett.

* * *

><p>They were going to arrive at the coal factory at any moment. End of the line. No other places to check, no avenues left to this investigation. He had half-hoped to somehow open her eyes by now, but there'd been only silence.<p>

He didn't know of any other way.

Her mother's case.

Castle swallowed roughly, watching the streets pass outside his window.

Her mother's case. There'd been a reaction last night, a set to her jaw and tension in her shoulders, a ripple in her eyes when she'd dug the ring out from under her shirt.

His heart was pounding. He gripped the door handle and couldn't fathom how he started a conversation like this.

"You better not vomit in my car."

He choked on a laugh, shot his eyes to her.

She was - improbably - smiling.

"I will do my best to not," he got out.

"Do you often get motion sick?"

"Never," he swore. He released the door and folded both hands in his lap over his seatbelt, stared into the city traffic. Enough going on that it kept his mind occupied, distracted by the futile attempt to make patterns out of the random chaos of people and cars.

"If you really are feeling sick, Mr. Castle, perhaps I should let you-"

"No, I'm - just wrestling with a personal crisis."

"No doubt. Mid-life crisis? Writer's block? Another public, drunken fight with a blonde your daughter's age?"

He gaped at her, stunned by the nastiness of her barb. Kate had always been snarky but never outright cruel.

Had she?

Maybe she _had_, and he in his fog of love-at-first-sight blindness hadn't heard it, hadn't felt it that way. Maybe Kate Beckett had always been this, and he'd just wanted to love her past those very firm walls she kept putting up.

Her mother's case.

That death and its injustice had _built_ those walls, and they'd been the surest shot over them as well. Demolished every brick and mortar between them, it had, one way or another. His clumsy stepping in where he hadn't belonged had been - maybe - the only way to reach her.

"None of those. Instead, I've got an ethical question for you," he started, "since you're the head of a whole precinct and used to maintaining the NYPD's integrity."

"Is this about your unsubtle art of supposed psychic ability?"

Wow. It hurt. It did. Was it because his own fiancee was so far removed that this pale imitation of her could wound him with her un-sparked snark?

_Un-sparked snark. _Good one; almost alliteration. He'd have to remember it. Un-sparking snark? Un-sparked didn't quite get across the full meaning of the flatness of Captain Beckett, her affect gone dim, her too-reserved demeanor. She didn't engage. She-

"You actually have a question, Castle, or are we going to sit in awkward silence?"

"Awkward?" he hummed, filled with bright, beaming hope. If she _felt_ something-

"Socially awkward, considering you foisted yourself off on me."

"Ah. Well, on to my ethical dilemma."

"I'm all ears."

She drove a little recklessly, this one. He gripped the door handle once more. "If a person had knowledge of a crime, say a decades old crime, but said nothing-"

"Let me be very clear - speak up."

"What?" he murmured, chest catching.

"If you have knowledge of a crime, no matter how old, _speak up._ No one is served by silence."

He closed his mouth.

"Mr. Castle, did you witness - wait, did you _do_ something?"

"Me?" he squeaked.

"Keeping quiet makes you culpable," she said. Her voice was _fraught_ with emotion. Well, for Captain Beckett it was. The tiniest sliver of a crack threaded through her words. "Ethically and morally, if not legally. There's been too much left unresolved."

"Unresolved."

"Victims' families need closure. Victims need closure. Even if the 12th could do nothing to prosecute, what you know might be the _key_ to someone else's _life._"

The key to hers.

He didn't want to do this. He couldn't do this.

"What if there was no proof?" he murmured. But even as he spoke the words, he realized, horrifyingly, that there _was_.

In those elephants on parade on the captain's desk.

Oh, God.

"Proof isn't-"

"Is Captain Montgomery-" Castle cut himself off, cleared his throat, tried again. He could see the story in this universe unfolding so well. "Did he die? You took over as acting captain and the rest was history?"

"Montgomery?" she asked, sounding bewildered. "He retired."

He wouldn't _cry_. Not for Roy. That would be worse than- "Is he here?"

"Mr. Castle?" She looked horrified and he turned his head away, eyes on the passenger window. They were blocks from the coal factory.

"He's not off in Florida or - is he here?" he got out. He cleared his throat again, clenched his fist over his knee to keep from reaching for her. "Can we see him?" What would he say? _You better tell her what you did or I will._

"He's not in Florida. Although he often winters in the Hamptons. But how do you even know-"

"In the Hamptons?" he barked, surprise like a shock of cold water. "How in the world can he afford that?"

The Captain slid him a sideways look and his heart began to race.

Third cop. Montgomery was the third cop and did she _know_? No, no, she couldn't possibly have changed that much, compromised _that much_.

"The salary for Captain can't be that high," he got out. Nudging. He could nudge, right? Come on, Beckett, where did he get the money for the Hamptons? He could push Beckett towards the right questions. That was infinitely more appealing that flat out accusing a state senator and making her own mentor complicit in it. "That's a lot of money."

"And it's none of your business."

Total shutdown. Damn it. Castle unwrapped his fingers from the fists he'd made, took a breath to smooth himself out. Her mother's case. This was the furthest they'd gotten in the way of real emotions in _hours_, and he couldn't let up now.

He'd seen Kate in the interrogation room enough times to know when he was on to something.

"What about - has Captain Montgomery ever made mention to you about - your mother's case?"

The car snapped to a halt, jerking Castle so painfully that his head whiplashed and the seatbelt caught his chest like a clothesline. He wheezed through the lancing pain and slitted his eyes, certain they'd been in an accident with Captain Bat-Out-of-Hell Beckett.

They were in the middle of the street, untouched, cars behind and around them honking and laying on their horns, angry and nasty comments hurtled at them for obstructing traffic.

"Kate?" he croaked, glancing over at her.

She was staring at him.

"Kate, you should - pull over or - you're in the middle of the street."

She turned her head to gaze out of the windshield but she made no other movement. She looked - shattered.

"Kate?" he husked. "Hey, babe, you need to get out of the street. Or switch places with me; I'll drive us-"

"You - what do you know about my mother's murder? I never told you about that. Why did you say - if someone _knew_, if someone knew about a crime - what-"

He reached out and closed his hands around hers at the wheel, but she whipped her head towards him, her pony tail catching his cheek like a slap. The grief filled her eyes in dark pools and she was drowning in it.

But still she struggled against the tide. Still she fought it. There was some Kate left in her yet.

"What do you know?" she rasped.

"Nothing, nothing, Kate. Nothing at all. Just drive. Please? It's only a block away."

She sucked in a breath, another, and then he felt the car ease forward as her foot came off the brake. But her fingers were blanched on the steering wheel.

He sank against his seat, hand over his chest where his heart was pounding a violent tattoo, but he couldn't speak.

He was too much a coward to tell Kate Beckett the truth.

* * *

><p>They approached the coal plant in silence.<p>

He didn't deserve her.

If he couldn't do this, he didn't deserve his wonderful, beautiful partner in any world.

He had to do this.

At the gate, Castle reached out and touched her hand. "Beckett-"

She spun around, flinty no-nonsense in her eyes. She had her phone out, he saw, and he stepped back, surprised. Her gaze zoned in on him, but she ducked her head as she spoke into the phone.

"Signs of activity here," she said. "Ryan? Yeah, get a team out here to cover us. We're going inside."

Castle cast a bewildered glance towards the factory, the chainlink fence obscuring the view before them. He didn't see what she saw, but she'd been focusing on the task at hand while he'd been wallowing in his own misery and guilt.

She hung up the phone and pulled out her weapon.

"What did you see?" he blurted out, poking his head up to see past the fence. Looked the same to him. Same big face on the sign, same nasty look to the loading bays at the side, the black layer of coal dust that coated everything.

The chainlink clattered and Castle glanced back to her; she was nudging open the chainlink with her shoulder, weapon drawn, but she had one hand pressed up at her sternum in an unconscious gesture Castle knew all too well.

He had a terrible thought. "Kate, have you - ever been shot?"

She cast him a completely bewildered look. "What? No."

He shook his head. "I meant - no, I don't know."

"Is that more of your psychic-"

"No," he got out, interrupting her. He reached out for the fence and jerked it open. "That's not in your future." _Unless I tell you about your mother._

Then it was her future. And no plucky sidekick this time.

"Mr. Castle," she sighed. Beckett elbowed him aside to go first, scowling at him for his forwardness. He followed like a good boy but knowledge weighted him down, made his steps drag.

He had to tell her and trust that a mellowed Captain of the 12th Precinct could investigate her mother's case smartly, even if she was wounded. They were only halfway across the yard, but he had to do it now or lose his courage. So he reached out and grabbed her by the sleeve of her jacket. She huffed and turned, and the look on her face was much more like what he loved in Beckett.

Gave him hope.

"You asked if I knew," he said gravely. "If I had knowledge of a crime. I do. I know."

Her lips went white. Too late he remembered that she was armed, and worse, already unholstered, but he couldn't stop now or he'd never start again.

"Captain. I-"

"Are you _part_ of it?" she broke.

Deja vu slithered over him hot and queasy and he held up both hands in a wary appeal. She braced the butt of her weapon in her other hand but she didn't raise it.

"No. Kate. No. I am not a part of this. I did some investigating on my own. Research."

"You did _what_?" No thunder, no fury in her eyes. He had never seen Kate so achingly, bleakly grief-filled.

"There are - others. Other victims." He had to think fast; he _had_ to do this right. He couldn't hand it over on a silver platter because she would never swallow it. Just enough, a plausible story. He had to give this thing skin. "Kate, it wasn't just your mother murdered; it's more than that - just as you've always thought."

"What," she whispered. "What are you saying?"

"They were all connected to one case - one case your mother had taken on. A mafia muscle man named Pulgatti. He was set-up for a murder he actually didn't commit and your mother was hoping for an appeal based on new evidence. Evidence of a conspiracy-"

"Stop," she husked, turning away from him. "Stop. A conspiracy? Not everything has to be as fanciful as your books, Castle."

"It wasn't just research for fiction. It was - I was helping _you_. We did this together. The Kate Becektt of my universe has-"

"You don't _know_ me. You don't know my mother, no matter how good a google search you did."

"Kate," he gritted out. "Just listen. Listen and look for yourself. I've spent years with you on this and it only gets worse. I know _who killed her._"

"Then who?" she snapped, halting just before the building to spin around. "Who murdered my mother? Tell me. The one _damn_ question of my life and you get to waltz in and just read it out like the end of a boring novel?"

"No, Kate. Never."

"_Who_?"

"William Bracken."

She broke into a hysterical laugh, pressing a fist between her eyes. "Of course," she said groaned. There was something so hopeless in her voice. "Of course. The senator. Right. And you have a gift. And a mystical universe in which your alibi for those murders is that we were-"

"_Kate_," he insisted. "Give me a chance to explain."

"Nothing you say can explain this," she rasped. "Digging into my personal life, _using_ my mother's death like it's your playground. This isn't recess, Castle. This is _my life._"

"It's mine too," he choked. "Kate, it's _been_ mine. I am right here. I have _been_ right here. For every terrible discovery we made, I was your partner. The evidence is right there, right there on your desk, has been with you for all this time-"

"Stop. No more games-"

"I know; it's hard to believe. When Montgomery told us the truth about what he did that night, I couldn't-"

"Don't you _dare_ drag his name through your mud," she hissed. She jerked away from him, stalking towards the afternoon shadows extending from the factory wall. "You should be gone by the time I get-"

She broke off sharply and he hustled the last step to reach her, to clear the piercing sunlight, only to step into the shadows and find a gun pointed at her head.

A man stood in the deep darkness of the front loading bay, his weapon steadily aimed at Beckett.

Castle halted, hands lifting in surrender. He eased a step closer to the Captain, but the man cast him a soulless look. "Don't move another inch, or I blow a hole in the lady cop."

Castle froze.

The man reached back and rapped on the metal of the garage door and it began to whine as it rolled up.

* * *

><p>Back-up was on the way, he chanted to himself. Back-up was on the way, and the boys would save their asses just like they always did.<p>

Castle swallowed as he faced the guns in the room.

A coterie of suits came flooding around the dormant machines and stopped before them. One man was particularly well-groomed, fingers twitching like the coal dust got to him. The immaculate man nodded. "That's him."

"Marcus Lark," Castle blurted out. "Lark Development. Really? You're behind this." Castle eyed the distance between himself and the briefcase in the man's hand.

That had to be it. Castle's ticket home.

He wanted, very badly, to go home. _Okay, Clarence, it's a wonderful life and all that. Now send me home._

"What do you know about this artifact, Mr. Castle?"

"Lark, you're going to jail," Beckett called out. "Just have your men put their weapons down before it gets worse for you. We can talk about a deal."

But Lark was ignoring her. He opened the briefcase and, just as Castle had thought, the medallion was nestled inside the foam. "You know what this is. You know what it does. Tell me, Mr. Castle."

"He has no idea-"

"I really don't," he said quickly. No way was he letting Lark vanish with it; he'd never get home. "It belongs in a museum."

"_Castle_."

He ignored Beckett too. "It's nothing to me. A medallion."

"I'm not buying that pathetic routine. Do you know how many _years_ I spent looking for this?" Lark hissed. "I know what it does; I know its power."

"Its power? What is this? Indiana Jones?"

"Castle," Beckett hissed.

Lark was glowering; he advanced another step, intimidating only because of the fervor in his eyes. The zealotry. "I've heard whispered secrets. I've chased it halfway around the globe. Alien technology they said, quantum anomalies, someone else explained. I've spent millions of dollars and decades of my life untangling legend from truth."

"I could do without the grandstanding," Beckett muttered, so obvious in her ploy to draw attention that no one even looked her way.

Castle's eyes were fixed on that medallion. It would get him _home_. To his own universe. His own Kate. His life again.

"Incans believed that it was a gateway to the gods, but as you've discovered, Mr. Castle, we're not gods over here, are we? It's a doorway to infinite possibilities, all the universes, and it's mine."

"Sounds like cheating," Castle said. He was two feet from that briefcase now. If he lunged for it and it worked, he'd be home.

If it didn't work, he'd be dead.

"What does _any_ of this have to do with Castle?" Beckett snapped.

Lark turned his eyes to her, a flickering measure of disdain. "My attorney overheard him at the precinct last night. I checked up on you, Mr. Castle. Wildly strange behavior for you, so either you've had a psychotic break, or this isn't your universe."

Kate, for all her bluster and determination to draw their focus away from the civilian, had suddenly gone quiet.

Castle shifted his gaze to her and saw her staring at him. Complete incomprehension.

His Kate would have at least _thought_ about it. His Kate would never be this closed off, shut down.

Never.

He wanted to go home.

Castle turned his head. "I can show you but it's not precise. It's - I need to touch it, get a better feel for the power."

"No. You tell me how it works."

He hesitated.

Lark lifted an eyebrow, a gesture of his fingers to the men with guns. "Shoot her."

"No!" Castle lurched in front of Beckett. "No, wait. I don't know how it works. That's the truth. But I can guess. I can recreate what I did to get here."

"Castle," she hissed.

"Stop stalling."

"I just touched it. I grabbed it. I was thinking maybe she would've been better off without me, and it took me here where - where she is. It was _random_. You can't control the where-"

"It's not random," Lark bit out, his neck straining. "It can't be random. I need a specific destination; a time where I didn't - _Tell me_."

"I just held it in my hand. I can - let me hold it now and I'll try." Just let him get back to her. He could still finagle this; he could charm his way home. "Let me see if I'm right and then it's your turn."

Lark turned away. "This is pointless. Kill them both."

Castle spun at the click of the gun, saw the weapon leveled at Kate, and he dived in front of her.

Just as he'd dived for her in a too-green cemetery one summer.

This time, just as then, he was too late. His angle was wrong and his shoulder hit her chest and brought them down, but he'd felt the moment the bullets hit a body.

He felt the blood, the pain, he felt it clattering around in his ribs even as he heard the shouts from the cavalary - too late. _NYPD! Get down! On your knees!_

"Mr. Castle? Castle, look at me."

He opened his eyes and realized he was crushing her.

It was so hard to move. His shoulder had gotten her in the sternum, but his body had slumped half on top of her. He couldn't make himself move.

"Why would you do that?" she whispered. Her hands framed his face for an instant and then she was fumbling at his clothes.

"Not here," he mumbled. "Wait till we get home."

"Oh, Castle," she said. It was hard to hear; there was a lot of noise and rushing in his head. She was rolling him off of her and he hit the concrete with a jolt that knocked the breath from him. "No. no. Richard Castle. Look at me."

He felt her fingers and then the wicked pressure, her whole body leaning into his to staunch the blood, and he found her eyes as they skimmed his face. He'd been shot. This time it had been him.

"You saved my life," she said, as if determined. Determined for what? It was so hard to keep his eyes open. "Rick? Hey, look at me. Ambulance is on its way. You saved my life, Mr. Castle, and I will _not_ let you die. You hear me?"

He really just wanted to go home. He wished he could see her, just touch her face. This Kate wasn't the same.

"Hey, stop. No, no. Mr. Castle. Castle, come on." She sounded so sad all of the sudden. "You promised - promised to be here. My mother's case. You said you've _been_ right here. You can't leave me now - you've hardly told me anything."

He couldn't get his lungs to fill. He should tell her, while he could. Tell her the truth.

He shouldn't be a coward. Kate Beckett didn't love a coward; she pursued the truth. He had to tell her the truth.

He found his fingers smearing across her beautiful neck, bright trails of blood. "I love you," he garbled. "I love you, Kate."

It was the truth.

Even if he would never see her again.

**X**

**(**so ends part one**)**

**.**

**#ThankYouTerri**


	4. Chapter 4

** Change of Sate**

**A/N:** Please note the change in verb tense, an indication of the reality of the alternate universe. It _is_. It _was_ not a dream.

* * *

><p><strong>Part II: The World Anew<strong>

_"Out of spent and aged things, I formed the world anew."  
><em>_-'Song of Nature' Ralph Waldo Emerson_

* * *

><p>"Family of Richard Castle?"<p>

Kate presses her elbow against her sides and straightens her spine. His mother and daughter are standing rigidly in the middle of the waiting room, frozen, voiceless. They don't seem to hear.

The silence stretches to the breaking point.

"I'm Captain Beckett," she says clearly. "I was with him. You have news?"

The doctor comes over to her, a glance of his eyes towards the other two women before he decides she's the best one to speak with. He clasps his arms in front of his body, glances down.

No.

Not today. She will not-

"I'm one of Mr. Castle's surgeons - Dr. Barnes. He's in recovery."

Kate lets out a stuttering breath.

"It's going to be touch and go for a few hours. His heart isn't steady. Both bullets entered his thoracic cavity and the damage was extensive."

She forces herself to stay standing. "What can I do?"

"Nothing to do. We're watching him; he's in ICU on a breathing machine. The surgery was long and he lost a lot of blood-"

"There are a hundred and more NYPD officers giving blood downstairs," she says crisply.

"Yes, ma'am, Captain. I had heard. The Twelfth?" He nods again. "We gave him eight pints all total. Blood bank can use it."

Eight. The human body only has ten.

"We've managed to repair the damage to his lungs and heart, but we just can't know the outcome."

She nods, but her eyes catch the daughter, the black of her hair making her face too pale in her grief.

Kate clenches a fist. "Is he receiving visitors?"

"No," the doctor says quietly. His eyes cut to the daughter and grandmother, then he gives Kate a knowing glance. "Not a good idea. He's - rough looking. It's not pretty."

"When will he wake?"

"As soon as the anesthesia wears off, he'll start to come around. Hard to know when - his body might keep him under to heal. Soon as he's with it enough, we'll take him off the vent and see how he does. When that happens, then he can have his family come in."

Sounds smart. But she's going in there now.

* * *

><p>Her heart slows to match the sound of the machine measuring his own.<p>

She stands with her arms folded just inside the privacy curtain and she stares down at the man in the bed who said impossible things.

But she believes them. Somehow. Believes _him_.

There will be an interrogation, subtle and deft and careful, but an interrogation nonetheless. She will be gentle, but she has to know.

The machine beeps, some kind of warning, she doesn't know, but it draws her eyes to him. The impossibility of him.

He's swollen, face puffy, fingers like sausages. Her own chest aches with the tubes running in him and snaking out again, like she's witness to a lion that has been felled by a mouse. It's unnatural - Richard Castle immobile in that bed.

She takes a breath in time with his, forces her eyes away. The curtain sways with a gust of heated air from the vent overhead and she puts her back to the bed, slides her phone out of her pocket. It's supposed to be off, but a Captain of the precinct is never out of reach.

She texts Ryan. _Will you go into my office and send me a list of all the case files on my desk_?

He told her it has been with her, on her desk, all this time. She caught him in every nook and cranny of her house, the Twelfth, and she doesn't doubt he read or skimmed each one of those case files, nosy as he is.

Curiosity killed the cat.

_William Bracken, _he said. She laughed it off. But he also jumped in front of those bullets for her without even hesitation.

She doesn't understand, but so much of his words were like that: incomprehensible.

_I love you, Kate._

If he were a stranger. If he were a random conspiracy theorist who showed up at the 12th. If he were anyone other than her once-favorite author, his words would be dismissed out of hand. Entirely.

But Kate Beckett has never dismissed the words of Richard Castle - even that pretentious and overwrought book of 'literature'. She's read him, she is used to taking in his words like gospel, devouring, ravenous for more, never quite content with the final chapter. He ends his novels on a cliffhanger, leaves her wanting, imagining possibilities, and he did the same this afternoon.

He's _her_ writer, the sole tether in a world oblivious to her grief, derisive of her needs. He was the one who-

His books. His _books_ did that for her. Not him. _Not him until today._

She usually flinches when Page Six catches her eye; she turns off the Late Night show when he gives an interview. She finds herself lurking on twitter and then renouncing her stalkerish ways when she sees what he actually thinks about the world. He has always been a bitter disappointment in real life.

Except today.

She never wanted to know him. She wanted only his voice. His authorial identity which never judged from the page, the words that gave the world a fresh and sharp-cornered meaning, provided justice and a good-guys-win-in-the-end.

_I love you, Kate._

If he were a stranger to her, lying on the cold concrete with his eyes unfocused but his words so clear, she could pretend it meant nothing.

But Richard Castle's words _always_ mean something. To her.

And she can't pretend. He did this for her; she'll believe in him.

Her phone vibrates with a text, a list of all of her open cases, but Ryan has included a camera shot of her desk, being a little irreverent even though she's repeatedly scolded her boys about their gallows humor.

The photo captures her eye. Her desk is precise, if not immaculate: the cases neatly stacked in their tray, the laptop closed and waiting, the blotter arranged with the calendar below, the landline phone angled perfectly for her hand, the pen perched atop her planner.

The nameplate is brass but it shines. The parade of elephants adds one of the only personal touches in her spare, spartan office. She doesn't like mementos, and she doesn't like her worlds colliding. Who she is at home, among her books and eclectic art and bronze knicknacks and oversized couch - that is an entirely different woman from the Captain of the Twelfth.

A woman _he_ talked straight to, as if he had seen her in her own home. Never has a person ignored the exterior and gone straight for her heart.

Familiarity, compassion, curiosity, challenge-

She strokes her thumb over the elephants and inadvertently selects the image. The photo blows up full screen and she regards the careful troupe, her ears attuned to the heart monitor and breathing machine.

_It's on your desk, it's been right there with you for years._

She blanks her phone and the screen goes dark. She shoves it back into her pocket, swallowing roughly through the things that want to surge in her, the messy things, the things that will hurt.

It's not hope. She can't hope.

Beckett closes her eyes to count slowly to ten, but a sound breaks into the room.

A groaning, a terrible breath that won't come, an animal in pain.

Kate opens her eyes, jerking forward, encloses his IV-laced arm. "Mr. - Castle? Rick. You're okay. You were shot, but you're going to be okay."

It's a lie, but his eyes flutter open.

He has beautiful lashes for a man.

* * *

><p>The doctor is not happy to see her, but he proceeds with the extubation as she stands sentinel is his room.<p>

Richard Castle has no need for police protection, but there is a faint whisper of a voice that says he _knows_ something. He has knowledge of her mother's murder and that needs to be guarded at all costs.

While his lungs and chest work to expel the breathing tube and the nurse twists and pulls it free, Beckett has to grip her elbows to hold back the noise in her own throat.

She has never seen such violence done to a living body before.

Lanie would tease, but no one should sound like a keening wild beast caught in a trap - just to breathe.

She won't interrupt to ask, but when the flurry calms down and the nurse is checking vitals and manipulating his head, when the doctor flashes a penlight into Castle's forced-open eyes, she steps to the foot of the bed and waits. The nurse leaves.

The doctor glances her way and she takes it as invitation.

"He's under police protection," she lies. Not a lie. "I'll be on duty in here until I have back-up. Can you tell me his prognosis?"

The doctor glances her over. "I'm his heart surgeon. Dr Davidson. But you can call me Josh."

"Dr. Davidson," she nods, "can you tell me what the next few days will look like - as far as consciousness goes? There are some important questions I need to ask him."

The surgeon straightens up, taking her put-off but remaining professional. Too professional, since he says, "I'll need some forms to be signed, officially, from you. And his family members - next of kin - will have to authorize a release of medical information to an outside party. That is, unless you're getting a warrant."

Touche. "I'll talk to his mother about it," she says, quickly. "Can you please send her back this way - with a nurse as escort? I won't leave, but I need to stay informed. I'm sure she would like to see him as well."

Davidson looks frustrated by her, but she's learned in her tenure as captain that the best way to get things done is to assume a degree of civil cooperation and proceed as if they are indeed capable.

"Thank you," she continues. "This is a rather sensitive matter. I appreciate your willingness to work with the NYPD, Dr Davidson." She offers her hand, and a soft smile, because he's attracted and it always works.

And it does. He shakes hands, all business, but his fingers are perhaps warmer along her knuckles. When he pulls back the curtain to leave, she sees him heading towards the door at the end of the hall and the waiting room beyond.

Good, he's cooperating.

Kate turns back to the bed and studies the man breathing on his own. His hair is flat against his forehead and shadows his closed eyes; her fingers twitch.

The rest of him is a sea of white and cream, seriously washing him out, completely not attractive.

But she can't take her eyes off of him, and when she hears footsteps on the other side of the curtain, she realizes she's got her fingers wrapped around his ankle.

As if to hold him here.

She has a thousand questions and he is the man with all the words.


	5. Chapter 5

**Change of State: The World Anew**

* * *

><p>"Oh, <em>Kate.<em> Darling, of course. She can have anything - any information she wants. Where do I sign?"

Beckett blinks, mouth still open with all of her perfectly ordered arguments ready. "Ma'am?" she says faintly.

Martha Rodgers waves her hand to the nurse in dismissal. "Go get what we need, dear."

Oh, she likes his mother. She likes his mother a lot.

"You're Kate," Martha says simply. "He's been talking nonstop about you. I take it he's built up some fantasy in his head and wouldn't stop pestering you."

Inwardly, Kate flinches, though she's been too long in politics to let it show on her face. "He saved my life. Put himself in front of a bullet for me. So whatever fantasy is in his head - I'm grateful."

Martha looks flustered, and that's when Kate sees the garrulousness for what it is: worry. Miserable worry. The kind of emotion she can't let herself name or pin down, let alone handle, and it comes out this way instead - an act. So Kate softens her demeanor, gives herself liberty to connect with this woman's grief.

"Thank you for doing this," she tells his mother. "I think he may have information-"

"Oh, I don't care," Martha sighs. "He'd want you here. Or well, the man who came sweeping through our lives these last few days, talking a mile a minute, crazy ideas, living his book out loud. That man would want you here. So you're here."

Martha's fingers unfurl glittering with rings and she takes her son's hand, smoothing uselessly at the ends of his nails where Kate can see blood is caked. The blood is there in the fine lines around his knuckles as well, only on that one hand, and she can't explain it, doesn't understand how it got there.

The nurse comes back, parting the curtain and stepping into the crowded enclosure with them. She's handing over forms and it's a strange and awkward dance, figuring out which lines to sign and where, all passed over the top of his inert body, she and his mother both listening more to the sound of him breathing than to their instructions.

"You can't stay back here, ma'am. Ms. Rodgers," the nurse hesitates. Her cheeks are pink; she's blonde. Richard Castle would be flirting with her, Kate is almost completely certain. But only _almost_.

The Richard Castle who usually appears on talk shows and twitter, the Richard Castle of boob-signing and drunken parade float-crashing - he would be. But the man who jumped in front of a bullet and whispered love to her while she felt his blood pulsing in time to his heart under her hands...

"Ma'am? Captain Beckett can you please tell her-"

"I'm sorry, Martha," Kate scratches out. "I'm sorry."

Martha releases her son's hand, waves it in the air as if for some effect she's got no dialogue for, and she exits stage right with the nurse. The curtain swishes closed, but not before Kate sees a chair pushed back against the wall outside. She reaches for it, drags it into the enclosed space with her, sinks down to sit at his bedside.

Her whole body aches and why is it that hospital beds are raised so high? It puts her upper arm against the mattress and makes Castle disproportionate, grotesque, as if he's a sleeping, injured giant.

She resists for a long time by simply watching his eyes move under his lids, counting his heartbeats until the number doesn't make any sense, and then she can't resist anymore.

She takes his hand in both of hers and calls his name.

"Castle?" She tells herself he's going to survive the night but she doesn't know. She doesn't know.

It's not just cryptic clues and the certainty she saw in his eyes when he said he knew her mother's killer.

It was the love. Shining, limitless, certain love.

He loves her.

_That's_ the answer she wants. Even if she doesn't know the question.

* * *

><p>Kate spends a long night dozing in an uncomfortable chair before the dawn brings relief. She's the first to see his eyes open - they land unerringly on her though he doesn't speak - and she presses the call button for the nurse. After that, their connection is interrupted and she's pushed to one side as another surgeon on call plus an attending and a couple nurses come through.<p>

He's taken to x-ray to deal with a possible cracked rib and she follows along behind his hospital bed. He's in and out of consciousness, his words mere garbles, too archaic or strained for her understanding. He might as well be speaking in tongues.

He's placed in a secluded room in ICU after the x-rays and a CT scan. His head is fine, the doctor is nominally encouraging, he doesn't seem to see her when he does wake. After another strangely silent hour of semi-consciousness, his eyes begin to rove the room, almost cautiously, some understanding in them that spurs her to action.

Kate asks for his family to be allowed inside and special privileges are granted to escort them back, but of course he drops off to sleep before they arrive. Nevertheless, his daughter flies for him, hair like a funeral streamer, black and dark and spilling over the white hospital gown as she hugs his neck.

"Daddy, I'm so sorry, I'll move back to New York. Just-"

Martha is already there, tugging the girl away, clasping her shoulders to hold her up. "He's going to be just fine, Alexis. Just fine. You know he's proud of you and what you're doing in LA."

LA. Alexis. Kate files it away, watching the scene unfold. Martha is a dramatic actress - Ryan idolizes her in a way only Ryan could, even Esposito found a soft spot for the woman when she came to bail Castle from jail.

Kate stands to one side, unobtrusive, but Alexis's red-rimmed eyes come back to her. "It's because of you he's been shot."

For an accusation, it's rather soft-handed and uncertain. It affects Kate not at all - she has heard infinitely worse - and this is only the truth.

"It's because of me, yes," she answers.

"Alexis, sweetheart, this is _Kate_. Kate Beckett."

"Beckett?" Alexis squeaks. Her eyes flick back to her father before glancing over Kate. Only now does Kate feel uncomfortable, for the first time since those blue eyes stared out of the girl's father and said _I was with you. In bed._

"I'm Captain Beckett," she offers, stepping forward to shake hands. It feels so stiff that she drops her hand before Alexis can dutifully complete the required polite gesture. Instead Kate takes one more step and lightly embraces the girl around the shoulders.

Alexis trembles.

"He's got very good doctors," Kate says. "The best team seeing to his care."

"He couldn't stop talking about you," Alexis whispers. "He's in love with you. But you got him shot - do you even deserve it?"

"Alexis!" Martha cries sharply.

Kate steps back, releasing the girl, releasing the moment. "It's okay. You're upset. I'm the cause." She glances to the bed, a fresh look at what's been done, what she bears. "Mr. Castle - your father did a very selfless thing. He saved my life. He's a good man."

"But you don't love him back," Alexis says coldly.

"He's not - he doesn't _know_ me," Kate stumbles.

A groan from the bed has them all orienting his direction, eyes and bodies turning, his daughter going forward to crouch close, one knee in the chair Kate had been using. Alexis strokes his forehead and murmurs to him and Kate finds herself leaning in, unable to help it, yearning for that flash of blue once more.

That flash of certainty.

"Dad. Come on, Daddy, open your eyes."

When he does, it's like the room holds its breath. Time stops. The lights dim in reverence for the effort it must take him to bring himself up.

His breathing is labored.

"Alexis, darling, lift up," Martha murmurs at her ear. Alexis scrambles away, trying to remain without leaning on her father, and Kate stares at the places on his chest where she knows the bullets went through.

A double-tap, professional. They intended to dispatch her. Final. She's just enough shorter than him that it went through his chest and into his lungs and missed the aorta. Just enough.

He was wrapped around her when they went down, his body encompassing hers. She's not even bruised from hitting the ground, so complete was his protection.

He was a shield around her. And now he's a beached thing in a hospital bed, breathing roughly, struggling for consciousness.

His eyes, fixed on the ceiling, start to drift down to the faces before him. His mouth opens and the sound that comes out is broken.

Alexis is crying.

Kate presses her hand to her sternum, breathing past the ache of empathy. She knows, she knows, but at least Alexis gets to keep her father. At least her parent didn't die.

"Lex..." he slurs.

"Hey, Daddy," Alexis gulps. She's wiping tears and leaning in, hugging his neck, and Kate can see the wince that flashes deep and feral in his eyes.

It's not her place to remonstrate, but Martha doesn't seem to see it. Martha is hanging on Alexis and causing both of them to press down into him until his face twists.

"Hey, okay, okay," she says finally. "Easy. Easy." She has Alexis by the elbow, and the young woman is struggling to remain apart, obviously not happy with Kate but at least recognizing the need for a gentle touch.

And that's when his gaze slides to her. His eyes are cool blue relief, relieved, and he sighs. "Thanks," he croaks. "Saved me."

She chews hard on her bottom lip to keep it contained, frowns down at him. "Other way around, Mr Castle. You saved me."

"Must've been good," he husks, and his eyes drop shut. "To bring a beautiful doctor to my bed."

But it's all slurred and he's gone.

He doesn't know her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Change of State: The World Anew**

* * *

><p>"I'm going to get the doctor," Martha says again. "Someone is going to give us answers."<p>

His mother is already out the door, leaving Beckett with the man's brittle, dark-haired daughter. The man himself is observing from droopy eyes, his hand wrapped around the girl's fingers.

"Dad, you talked about her for - the last few days. All the time. You said you loved her. You said your life was better off with her."

Kate catches a breath. "Alexis, don't. There's no need."

"He's said nothing else for days and now it's just gone?"

She tries to angle her body away so that Castle can't see her talking about him. She takes a a quick moment to lay her hand on Alexis's forearm, attempting to appeal to the girl. "Your grandmother will find a doctor and get some answers. This kind of confusion may be indicative of a different kind of injury."

"Not brain damaged," Castle grumbles from the bed. Petulance is coming through in his rough, abused voice, and she doesn't like it.

Or wouldn't like it, if she could see past the wrap of bandages at his chest, the hospital gown askew on his shoulder, the limp hang of his hair into curious and familiar eyes.

"Just tell me the story," he says, a weak grin her direction. She's been caught staring again.

Beckett closes her lips together.

"'Lexis," he husks. Every word seems dragged across gravel. "Pumpkin, you tell me, since apparently you're talking to me again."

He sounds awfully _with it_ for someone with a supposed head injury. She doesn't want to say in front of Alexis, but it's possible the last few days have been the result of some kind of stroke. Word salad, garbled meaning, his crazy insistence on twilight zone worlds.

_I checked up on you, Mr. Castle. Wildly strange behavior for you, so either you've had a psychotic break, or this isn't your universe._

Kate frowns. He never felt crazy. She _knows_ crazy, and Richard didn't have the makings of a psychotic break.

Alexis leans in and strokes her father's hair, pushing his bangs off his forehead only to have them fall again. Kate realizes at the last second that her arm has lifted to do it for him herself, do it right.

She drops her arm, steps back.

"Dad, I don't know much but... you were talking about it being all a dream. I thought you were trying to goad me - after being gone so long."

"Always," he flashes, a smile that doesn't quite make it. He's hurting over her and it makes Kate's hand come to his bedside, as if her presence does anything at all.

She knows something about the tension in a father-daughter relationship.

"I know you don't remember it, but we had a really good talk last night. You just - were so filled up with hope again, Dad. You told me that I - that I mattered."

"'Lexis," he groans, his eyes brimming blue as he looks at her. His words are still coming out rough, raw-edged, like his throat is filled with knives. "'Lex, everything you do matters." He's trying so hard to get it out, swallowing roughly. "Every decision, every moment affects people around you."

His voice sounds awful, cracking at all the important parts, and he has to keep pausing to rest, his eyes closing in such beautiful frustration. He growls and his hand is clutching Alexis's so tightly that the girl's eyes are spilling with tears.

"That's what you told me," she whispers. "I just - thought you'd forgotten that too."

"Don't remember telling - but true. All true."

His voice breaks, he swallows convulsively, and Kate finally jerks forward to help; she can't keep standing apart. Even still, he's trying to talk to his daughter. Kate hastily pours water into a plastic cup from the pitcher on the side table, removes the plastic sleeve from the straw. When she gives it to him, he sucks the water down so fast he's coughing even as he tries to talk.

"You can change things, million ways. I lost that faith - I'm sorry, sorry for giving it up. Sorry I can't get it right-"

"Dad-"

"But you - so young. Can't see it yet, but you have - potential for change. No matter circumstances or city. You can make a difference. You will."

Alexis's face is streaked with tears, and she's not speaking, just gulping back these bright jeweled drops and absolutely making her father miserable. Suffering through her suffering. He looks so broken up over her, over his less-than-stellar track record.

But Kate clears her throat. "You did that for me, Mr. Castle. You didn't lose your faith; you had it when it mattered. So. Thank you for saving my life, at nearly the cost of your own. Looks pretty great from over here."

She gives them an encouraging smile, thinking she'll slip out now, she'll leave him to his family. There's healing going on here that - by the looks of things - they've needed.

Perhaps Martha's exit was staged for a reason. Kate can learn. She'll take her bows.

"Listen, if you guys need anything," she tells the young woman. "Anything at all-"

"You're not leaving," Castle rasps from the bed. "You can't. Haven't got your answers."

"It's fine," she assures him. "If you do end up remembering, then call me. Until then, Mr-"

"No," he grunts. His face contorts with pain and his hand clutches at Alexis. "Pumpkin. Find - a nurse? Need something."

"Dad, are you okay?"

A crack of an eyelid. "Yeah," he breathes on a rush, clearly trying for her. "Course. Just a little. Nurse will know. Give me something."

"Yeah, of course. I'll find her." Alexis bends down and kisses her father's cheek before moving for the door and slipping outside.

Kate lets out a slow breath. "I'll let you rest."

"No, said that to get her out. Hospitals suck. She shouldn't see this. And you," he says. His eyes fall shut a moment, and every weary and terrible line shows up starkly on his face.

It rattles her, just how pale he looks, how _much _of that was an effort for his daughter.

His eyes flare open again, evidently he wants to hang on. "Stay. You know - what I was doing, have the story. Only fair. Keep me company, tell your version."

"Actually. I should-"

"First good story I've heard in years," he mumbles. "Wish I hadn't forgot you."

"I'm pretty boring," she says, smiling at the echo. He's looking at her now as he looked at her then. _I don't believe you're boring at all._

"Sorry," he husks again. His mouth works slowly, his tongue moves at his gums. She can see how much effort it costs him. "I can't - should be able to remember you."

"It's fine," she tells him quietly. "Get some rest."

His hand shifts on top of the bed covers, his eyes twitch and open again. "I was solving a case?"

"Something like that."

He swallows and licks his lips; he's struggling so hard now that she takes an unwitting step closer. His eyes roam her face, intent and purposeful. "I could write a whole series of books about the mystery in your eyes."

She's suddenly aware of just how alone they are in the hospital room; the skin across his cheeks looks stretched too thin. Papery. His breathing sounds harsh. He's probably in as much pain as he admitted to his daughter as a cover story to get her to leave - or more.

"You need to rest," she insists.

"Saved your life. Should remember you," he sighs.

"I'll fill you in on the important parts," she soothes.

"Can see why I did," he mumbles. His mouth has lost its ability to form sounds correctly. "You're devastating. Beautiful."

"And you're on heavy narcotics," she smiles. Her back is stiffly straight; she wants only to get out of here. "Rest."

His next words are a hum in his throat and a sigh and he drifts away.

* * *

><p>Kate stands very still for a long time, telling herself it's so he won't wake again and grow agitated alone. His mother and daughter went back to their apartment to get clothes and toiletries. The daughter wants to camp out in the waiting room; her grandmother is encouraging it.<p>

She finally withdraws her hand from where it rests on the mattress, close to his hip but not quite, and she folds her arms across her chest.

He doesn't even know her.

She tries to make herself leave. She really tries.

But it's no good.

* * *

><p>Day two finds her up at the hospital again, no reason she can explain, visiting on her lunch break. It comes out that Alexis has classes and Martha the big opening of that new Stoppard play and somehow it falls on Kate Beckett to remain.<p>

Somehow she doesn't even mind.

While his daughter and mother say farewell, she makes a quick phone call to her detectives from the waiting room, composing her thoughts until Esposito answers.

"Javi," she starts quietly. "I'm going to stay up at the hospital for a while. I should be in the office tomorrow morning, but until then, have everything routed to my email."

"You're staying."

"Don't start, Detective."

He has a noise for her that she chooses to ignore, catching sight of Martha as she passes the waiting room. She steps out into the hall and finishes up with Esposito.

"Just dump my calls to voicemail; I'll check email every hour. If there's an emergency, I've got my phone on me."

She hangs up before he can debate with her; she doesn't encourage backtalk, but some push-back allows her to be flexible, a better leader to her precinct. Today she just doesn't have it in her.

"Martha," she calls.

The older woman startles at the end of the hall, nearly to the doors, and spins around. "Oh, Katherine!" She comes back, clasping Kate's hands in hers, gushing and meteoric in her relief, her flustered grief. "Thank you so much, darling. I don't think it's good for any of us to put a halt to our lives. Richard doesn't want that."

Except Kate is. She's halting _her_ life. And she doesn't know why.

"I can stay for the rest of the afternoon," she says.

"And he'll sleep all night, so that's covered. In the morning, I'll come check on him."

"In the morning? Isn't your play-?"

Martha looks unconcerned. "It will be fine. You don't need to worry. Thank you, dear." She grasps Kate's hands and leans in to kiss both cheeks, leaving Kate a little stunned in her wake.

Martha disappears into the elevator and the hall is quiet, held breath waiting.

So Kate walks back to his room and eases open the door. It clicks as it releases the catch but Richard Castle doesn't rouse.

He's asleep. He's been asleep. She went in to work this morning and stared at her computer, her mind scattered, the cases open on her desk. She reviewed each one slowly, methodically, plotting points on the permanent whiteboard in her office, rehashing the details, arranging them together, then apart, then mixing elements.

She got nothing.

And this man in the bed has no idea who she is, let alone any cryptic clues about her mother's death.

She sat in her wood-paneled office and felt hope slip further and further out of her reach until it was gone.

So she came here.

Inside this starched white room with the sharp odor of vaseline and disinfectant, hope is a warm thing around her neck, making it hard to speak but so easy to believe - that this time, when he opens his eyes, all of it will be settled in the blue.

"Hey," he rasps.

She stirs from her thoughts and steps into the room, giving him a smile she can feel is pinched.

"You okay?"

She lets out a breath. "I'm not the one in ICU."

"You look sad," he husks.

"I'm okay. How are you?"

"Tired," he mouths. It barely comes out. She's been learning to decipher the sounds she hears, lip-reading and straining; he's so frustrated when his mother doesn't understand him. The doctor said it was the intubation - a little scarring on his vocal cords. His voice will return to normal given time and rest.

"I could leave. Let you sleep-"

His hand catches hers and immediately he grunts, lashes fluttering shut. Thick and full like a woman's - like a woman would long to have. A pale remnant of a freckle at the bridge of his nose. Dark shadows below his eyes. He had a tan this summer, she thinks; his skin is like parchment now.

"Don't go. Tell me."

"Tell you what?" she says carefully. Her fingers are not exactly trapped by his, but it would be unpleasant to attempt to extricate herself from that clammy grasp. "Rick? What do you need?"

"Tell me about me."

She blinks.

"You keep saying - I should know." His throat frustrates him; he growls and narrows his eyes, looking at a point on the ceiling. The bed is lowered because of the breathing machine, and he looks both massive and so small. Giant and child.

"Would you like to sit up?" she says.

His eyes dart to hers, eyebrows expressive and wide. "Yes. Yes, I - please."

She leans forward, using the moment to withdraw her fingers from his grasp, and she presses the button near his head. Two rounds in the chest, his dive in front of her like a blur, both of them falling.

The bed raises and he makes fists against his thighs, teeth gritting.

"Rick. Are you in pain?"

"It's okay; I'm okay," he chants. "I'm okay."

"I'm calling someone." She's not playing around, not when she was the one who put her hands in his chest, unable to stem the tide. "I'm calling the nurse."

"No," he gets out. "No, this is good. I can breathe."

Her hand hovers at the call button just beside his hip, too late, too slow, because his fingers wrap around hers and hang on again. His lips part in something like a panting smile.

"Better," he croaks.

"Liar," she says gravely.

He smiles. He's rather handsome when he smiles like that - so genuine. She finds herself smiling back.

And then his eyes open and catch her in the act, and now his grin is a blazing thing, a transformative thing.

"I usually have - lots of great lines," he garbles. "Words aren't - as free right now. Forgive me."

"It's possible that's a good thing," she admits. "I've seen you in interviews. I might shoot you myself."

His grin cracks wider. "I like you, Kate Beckett. Very dry."

She closes down on the smile, sinks back into discomfort, but he doesn't seem to notice. His thumb is tracing on the top of her hand and she has to sit down.

He turns his head and watches her, sleepiness limning his eyes. "Gonna tell me?"

"Tell you-? Oh. About yourself? Your two days of missing moments?"

His affirmative is lost in the way he braces himself against the pain, an arm up at his ribs, palm flat to his own sternum. She knows exactly where those wounds are, though she can't say she knows what he feels. She can only guess how it feels to be shot, and she has him to thank for saving her that intimate knowledge.

"I'll tell you, Rick, but I'm not the writer. It won't be nearly your caliber."

He husks something and drags his eyes to her, that smile flickering through his pain. "You're a fan..."

She tilts her head. "I know of you." Doesn't dim the woozy, adoring look he's giving her. "Though you haven't written anything new in years, have you?"

"Nothing to write. Least until now."

She lifts an eyebrow.

He curls his thumb into the cup of her palm. "You tell me like a police report; I'll write the story."


	7. Chapter 7

**Change of State: The World Anew**

* * *

><p>She has a nightmare.<p>

She's only just fallen asleep in the chair beside his bed when she has an awful dream of darkness and his blood - falling and his blood, the cold concrete and his blood. His _blood._

How he cradles her, even as he falls.

How blue his eyes are-

But they're filling with blood. The red inks across the whites of his eyes, floods his pupils and out over his lashes, drips down to her cheeks like tears.

_It's been with you, _he whispers, but blood falls from his mouth instead of words. Panic for him clutches at her, and she struggles out from under him, flips him to his back, her hands sinking into his chest.

Sinking deep. Right to his heart, the gore of his chest encasing her hands.

_Your mother's case, _he groans.

_What, what is it? _she calls, but his eyes close on blood. Her hands feel his slow-beating, stilling heart and she chokes out his name. _Stay with me, stay with me, don't-_

But everything stops. His heart.

The world.

Richard Castle opens his eyes and it's a smile; she feels it like sunlight heating her skin. She's pressing both hands to his wounds, a palm for each hole, but his arms come around her, wrap around her, drag her down against his chest.

How solid he feels now, how real. How he cradles her even as she falls into him.

She breathes the metallic tang of blood, but his heart begins to beat again, thumping between her fingers.

Her questions slough off of her, her franticness fades. His eyes are blue and clear, the blood warm and vital. It's like a current, a tide pulling her down to him, and she goes.

_Been with you, _his voice rumbling like the ocean. _  
><em>

He's never been with her; this is all new.

_Been with you._

Mouth against her cheek, her ear. She feels him insinuating himself, arms around her, twining, strong, until he rolls on top of her again. She struggles - but only to feel her body pushing up against his, only to feel him pressing her back down.

_So be with me_, she murmurs, but when his lips touch hers and seal for a kiss, her mouth fills with his blood.

She wakes choking, jerking upright in horror, gagging on a phantom sensation.

The room is dark, her heart pounding a strange rhythm, her hands clammy, her thoughts scattered. She holds her hand over her mouth to swallow back the urge to vomit, finds herself pitching forward, elbows on her knees, until her forehead rests against the side of the hospital bed.

She stops there, trying to breathe, shuddering.

Until she feels his palm lay over the back of her head.

Kate goes still, gulping back a sob, and his fingers stroke the hair falling from her pony tail, clumsy, not quite with it.

"It's okay," he roughs. "Be okay. Promise."

He must think she's Alexis.

She sucks in a shuddering breath, tasting the nightmare still.

"'S okay, Kate." His palm falls heavy to her ear, and when she lifts her head, she catches that loose hand, holds it against her cheek, but he's already asleep again.

* * *

><p>CT scan is normal. X-rays - normal. Everything normal except for the two bullet wounds in his chest.<p>

His memory is a mystery. Two days gone, the shooting gone, that claim he made on her - gone.

To say he's intrigued seems to be an understatement. Richard Castle is relentless in his pursuit of answers, even from a hospital bed, even falling asleep in the middle of his questions.

But to save his family the pain, he only asks _her_. Captain of the 12th Precinct. No one else.

Alexis enters the room and Rick Castle falls silent; he mutes his questions when his mother regales him with tales from her play. Day three finds Kate moored to his bedside, dealing with snide texts from Esposito and Ryan's puppy-eager offers to help.

The Twelfth is calm, so Kate is calm.

In between visits from his family, Rick Castle does the interrogating.

"I said what again?" he scrapes out. "To make you take over the questioning." Vocal cords are still damaged from the emergency room's intubation. He sounds awful, nothing like his old self (which old self?), but Kate has taken another half-day from work to sit at his bedside and battle back and forth.

There's something about the push and pull, not giving in to him, something electric to his not giving in to her.

"You said a lot of things," she murmurs. "And you didn't _make_ me do anything. The other detectives were getting nowhere, so it was my turn to take a crack at you."

"You can have a crack at me any day," he blurts out. Blinks. He looks suddenly bashful.

He is so _very _not smooth from a hospital bed. She pats his forearm. "I should let you rest."

"No, no. Saved your life," he trumps. Has every time she's tried to deflect him. "I get to dictate the conversation. Tell me word for word."

She sighs. "I think you're reading too much in this, Castle."

"We were in bed together," he hums. "That's what I said."

"But we weren't."

"I don't remember that either, no-" He coughs and clears his throat with a growl, so frustrated by the limits of his words. "Don't remember, but doesn't matter - there's a lot I'm not remembering. Could be we _were_. In another life. In bed together." Eyebrows dance at her, but his cheeks are too pale, the blood leached from his lips.

"Rick," she scolds.

He grins and the pale parchment of his face starts to glow. With his mother in the room, he is a flat mirror, dull, giving off only what Martha already brings. A moon to her sun. But with Kate, here like this, something else shines.

She doesn't want it to be true.

But it is.

"You interrogated me and then what?"

"You've heard this already," she says quietly. She knows if she keeps her voice low and soothing, he will fall asleep. He needs to rest. The surgeon is worried about an infection at the surgery site. She's worried that repeating the wild, outlandish claims he made will imprint them somehow.

"Tell me again, Kate." He's long stopped calling her Captain Beckett and slips more often in and out of consciousness and in and out of _Kate_. It's too familiar, but what can she say to a man who saved her life?

They haven't talked about him waking to find her crying in the dark. Maybe he doesn't remember, but the _Kate_ of it all says he does.

"You knew details of the crime scene we purposefully held back," she says finally.

"Coal dust," he grins. "That actually rings a bell. Research material. For a book I wrote. Long time ago. That sounds like me."

He's never told her that before. They've gone over the facts of this case twice now, but he's never mentioned that detail. "That sounds like you?"

His throat works as he tries to clear words past the sedation; the rhythm of the sentence is there first, and then the meaning becomes clear as she translates Exhausted Castle into English.

"That part sounds like me. Rest of this - sounds like the man I should've been."

She doesn't know what to say. There was recently a famous case where a man who received a brain injury became a math savant, suddenly able to see fractals in his head. She wonders what Castle sees - another life? the man he should've been? - spiraling out from him.

"You were him for two days," she says, but she knows it doesn't help. "You _are_ him. You can be him."

She remembers from psychology class another case: in 1848 a railroad worker named Phineas Gage was in a terrible rock-blasting accident where a tamping iron shot up into the left side of his face and exited out the top of his head. He was thrown back, but in moments he was walking to an ox-cart and being taken to the local doctor, giving the man an account of the accident. He lived, but he lost most of his social understanding, had to relearn traits and behaviors of polite society that were natural to all others.

He became a different man, though _how_ different no one could really say.

"I don't know anymore," Rick Castle sighs. His fingers curl and uncurl on the bed as if seeking. "You saw my daughter. I didn't think I could get her back, but here she is, talking to me without a trace of irony."

"She loves you," Kate says softly.

"But she used to be disappointed with me," he mumbles. His eyes drift from her face.

"She's not disappointed," Kate insists. "She's not at all, Rick. You did a selfless thing, a brave thing. She's proud of you."

"A thing I don't even remember. Proud because two days - and everything has changed," Castle rasps. His eyes close, and she thinks that it's, that's all for today, all he can stand, but suddenly his hand is gripping hers, so tightly, a desperation to it that makes her stand up to come to his aid.

"Are you in pain?" she whispers. "Rick? Do you need-"

"I want to be him," he croaks. "I don't want to be that - that failure. Can't I just-"

"It's okay," she murmurs, his own words last night in the dark. "It's okay." She finds herself leaning in to stroke back that flop of hair from his forehead. It's as soft as she imagined, though his skin is so much warmer than she expected. As warm as her dream. "Rick, don't. It's just the anesthesia wearing off, doc said you'd feel bad. It's okay."

"It hasn't been okay for a long time," he rumbles. He sounds awful, he _looks_ awful; he's like this because he jumped in front of a bullet for her, brought her down in the nick of time.

_I love you, Kate._

"It's okay now," she murmurs. She owes him this. Even if he doesn't remember the owing. She wants to owe him. "You're okay. Things might have changed but it's going to be for the better. You'll see."

His eyes are still shut; they don't look like they'll be opening anytime soon. Even his fingers are growing loose in hers.

"That's better," she sighs. "Just rest."

His mouth twists and his eyes flare open, that intense blue. "You know why I killed him?"

"What?" She's caught by the urgency in his eyes.

"Derrick Storm. I killed him. I know you're a fan."

"I - I asked but you never said why," she whispers. She hasn't - told him that. Derrick Storm has never come up. She has kept that part of herself carefully out of the narrative.

"I killed him because I was bored," he whispers. His eyes are too richly blue; he looks wrecked. "I was bored. What kind of man does that?"

"A writer," she says firmly. "You're a writer, Rick. Not a murderer. Believe me. I know the difference. I'm a cop."

"You're an angel," he sighs, beautiful lashes falling shut. "You're my muse."

And he's asleep.

She knows already; she won't be going home tonight.

She'll be here.

* * *

><p><em> the end<br>exit alternate universe_

**A/N:** Thanks for coming with me into their world and figuring out how the Alternate Castle would worm his way into Captain Beckett's heart. A second story **The World Anew**, a kind of epilogue, is already in the nascent stages, so expect that sometime in January.

Join the #ThankTouTerri campaign in promoting literacy education through storytelling by supporting Young (no space) Storytellers dotcom forward slash ThankYouTerri - it's been such a great experience so far! Thank you for all your help in getting the word out.


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